


Even the Swine

by Wolkemesser



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Canon Expansion, Ravnica, War of the Spark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolkemesser/pseuds/Wolkemesser
Summary: Domri's final moments, as seen from his own POV.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Even the Swine

The dragon reminded Domri of the boar-god.

It was a stupid comparison, obviously. They looked nothing like each other, and Domri knew for a fact that Ilharg was somewhere else in the city, finally let loose to smash the Azorius and the Orzhov and all the bastards who spat on him and his.

But the power the dragon had about him. The same power Domri had felt the night Ilharg entered his dreams, speaking a language Domri didn’t know, but that he understood perfectly. The language that made sense of slaughter. The language that let Domri bring all the lost beasts of Ravnica to his side and finally set the Gruul clans on the right path.

Power. The other guilds wielded false power gained through lies and tricks. The pathetic guildless had no power, and would never amount to anything. Even among the Gruul, there was too much fear to wield power. Only power could smash this rotten place. Only real power.

So why not follow real power?

Domri splashed through a puddle that was probably more blood than water. At his back the most loyal of the clans stomped along with him. A small group, but some of the best and strongest of the Gruul. Strong enough to see that Domri would lead them to a better life.

  


Even so, many of them couldn’t keep their eyes off the fools running around them, fleeing from the eternals instead of joining them. Idiots who couldn’t see that the blue men were here to remove the boot of guild oppression.

“We should help ‘em,” Revka grunted at Domri’s side. The big-shouldered berserker was looking toward the storefronts, at a bunch of eternals trying to get at a clutch of guildless workers. Two Golgari trolls and a spike-clad bloodwitch were fending them off with improvised weapons.

“Why?” Domri turned away. “They want to protect the weak, then they can die with the weak.”

“They’re fellow chaos-guilders,” Revka said. Domri could hear the frown on her face.

“Eh. Let the Raze take ‘em. We’ve got bigger rats to fry.”

“Should we bash them?” Another companion, a big-bellied ogre called Chokki, pointed a thumb over his shoulder. A bunch of gateless folk were huddled in a half-collapsed archway off the square, trying not to catch the attention of the metal skeletons that were wandering every inch of the district.

“If we’re not gonna help them, that is.”

Domri scowled. They shouldn’t even have been there, weak things. Idiots who licked the boots of merchants and the guilds of order, no doubt. They should have joined the clans when they had the chance. They should have joined the power that would have helped them.

He sneered. “Leave ‘em. This is happening for their good too. Either they’ll get to live in the dragon’s new world or they’ll die, either way it’s better than living in this stinking city as it is.”

“New world.” Thom, a long-legged viashino, looked around the street. Fires reflected in his wide eyes. “What kinda world do you suppose he wants?”

Domri scratched his chin. “It’ll be a world for the powerful. The right kind of powerful, this time.”

“Sure, Dom.” Chokki frowned at the eternals, still grappling with the Golgari. “Are we the right kind of powerful?” That got the others muttering. A few even stopped, and it looked like they might be itching to help with the fight.

On the wrong side.

Domri stomped. “That’s the world of laws back there. Laws that protect the weak and spit on us. It’s got nothing to offer any of you.” He thrust his axe toward the plaza. “That’s where the new power is. That’s what the Gruul have got to adopt to survive.”

The others exchanged looks. Most shrugged and followed Domri, but a few cowards slunk off to help fight the eternals.

Domri spat after them, and stomped away. Too frightened to follow power to freedom? Fine. He knew there were weaklings like that in the clans. He’d lived with them all his life.

Old Borborygmos had seemed powerful, once. He was big. Strong. But he lacked the power of will. The power to use power to do what had to be done in the world.

  


He’d seemed powerful when Domri first challenged him. When the fire of the Raze-boar filled Domri’s heart and the wild beasts of Ravnica had flocked to him, throwing the suppressed rage of every member of the clans at the cyclops’ dragging feet. Borborygmos had knocked aside the first few easily. Easily enough that Domri had felt the old fear of his own smallness again. Easily enough that Domri had almost begun to doubt.

But then the first boar had made it past Borborygmos’ axe and struck his heel. Then the great coward had stumbled, and all the clans saw it. They saw him fall to one knee, then to another, and numbers overcame him. Tusks tore new scars into his legs. Heavy bodies rammed him. He beat at them still, killing a few, but unable to overcome the mighty rhythm of the wild. He’d dragged himself away like a dog, and even the swine had jeered his weakness.

...

The sky was clear by the time they reached the plaza, though the streets were anything but. Ravnicans, Eternals, and people in strange clothes who could only have been other planeswalkers were fighting, running, hiding. Some of Domri’s boars had found their way to the plaza, and charged through the screaming crowds, bowling aside outsiders and city natives in their rage. There were enough idiots fighting the eternals to keep them busy, but still the odd skeleton had made a run at Domri’s group, and gotten carved up for their trouble.

They were almost dangerous, as distracted as Domri and his companions were by the titans that loomed over the Plaza.

Every child knew that there had been ten stone titans long ago, that those pompous Boros had called on when they wanted to stamp down on anyone who dared want to be free. These new creatures might have been them, if they hadn’t looked so much like the eternals. If they didn’t also stomp wojeks and ledevs alongside the guildless beneath their metal-sandaled feet.

“Do you feel that?” Domri whispered. “The power of gods. They feel the same as Ilharg.”

The others looked at him like he was out of his head. The words did sound wild, it was true. But he felt in them the same raw power as he felt in the Raze-boar. The same power to topple the world.

The power the dragon radiated by the ton.

“Dragon!” He shouted, channeling the violence of the wilds into his voice. “I’m Domri Rade! Champion and leader of the Gruul clans!” He waved at his companions. “We’re here to help you bring this place to the ground!”

The dragon didn’t even flinch. He was looking somewhere else in the chaos of the plaza.

Chokki coughed. “I don’t think he hears ya, Dom’”

Domri swore. “Yeah, I can see that!” He looked around the plaza. The Dragon’s new gods were killing people by the handful. The eternals were killing people by the handful. If the dragon couldn’t hear him, then he’d show his allegiance by example. “Krokt, just start killing the strange-looking ones. It’s their own damn fault for coming here anyways.”

  


The others hesitated. Domri snarled and charged a tall human with red face paint who hovered off the ground like a ghost. Another planeswalker, sure, but he defied the dragon-

Domri swung his axe. The strange man folded around it and lay still on the ground.

-and the dragon was the only power now.

Something collided with his axe on the back-swing. An older guildless man. He fell to the ground, at the feet of other ragged-clothed guildless. Family? Friends?

Domri didn’t have a lot of time to consider the group before they all pressed toward him, as if they didn’t care how dangerous he was. A line of eternals followed right behind them, weapons drawn. Behind Domri it was the same. His clan-mates pressed together, suddenly surrounded by a wall of blue and shiny bronze.

“P-please!” The guildless man scrambled up, clutching at Domri. “You have to protect us. You have to get us out of here.”

“Get off!” Domri shoved the man away, and he stumbled at the feet of the eternals. Two of his fellow guildless rushed after him, grabbing at his cloak to pull him away from the eternals. They got him halfway to his feet before eternal blades stuck them in a dozen places. The last one, a boy a little younger than Domri, tried to flee on his hands and knees, but a blue foot stomped down on his back, cracking his spine.

“Shoulda stayed in your home,” Domri muttered at the corpses. His heart was hammering. The other’s boy’s limp hand was inches from Domri’s own foot. “Shoulda just stood aside and let us bring the old ways back.”

_Rade. I see you had brains enough to challenge Borborygmos at the right time._

The voice of power boomed like a battle-cry in Domri’s skull. The magical fires around the dragon’s feet flared up. Domri’s heart rose up. He’d been right. Power was on the side of nature. On the side of the Gruul.

_I hope you’re grateful. I lost my best contact in the Simic procuring a contagion to make the cyclops weak enough to best without him realizing._

Domri blinked. Simic? What did they have to do with anything?

_What brings you here? What can you offer me, little walker?_

“I-I’ve brought you the clans!” Domri thumped his chest. “We’re all ready. Ready to tear down the stones and make Ravnica a paradise for the strong.”

The laugh that filled Domri’s head was unexpected. Unexpected and chilling.

_An amusing fantasy, but I have all the dumb muscle I need. Your spark is worth much more to me now than you are._

A spear plunged through Chokki’s chest. The tips poked out of his back like tiny golden zits popping with blood. The ogre fell to his knees, grabbing uselessly at the wound.

_Actually, I suppose it always was._

Domri barely had the time to get his weapon up to block a gob of acid-magic flung at his face. Revka’s scream cut short as an eternal’s tail ripped a hole in her throat. Thom managed to block a sword-strike, only to have the wind and the life bashed out of him by another eternal’s savage headbutt.

Two eternals came at Domri from the left and the right. One he smashed through with his axe. The other actually threw down its sword and reached out for him with its bare hands. It was almost fast enough to grab him, except that Chokki’s body came down on it, smashing it to the stone.

Domri swung his axe again in a wide arc, smashing apart two eternals whose weapons were still in his friends. He realized he was shouting. With a jolt and a bit of shame, he realized there were tears in his eyes.

“Bloody shits! We were here to help!” He scooped up a chunk of rubble and hurled it at another eternal. The bull-thing caught the stone in the head and stumbled a step, which was all Domri needed to get his axe up in the air and crack the thing’s chest apart. “We just meant to-”

He paused. The other eternals had stepped back. A single skeleton, all in fancy garb, was walking at him, holding a staff of gold out in front of them.

Domri spread his arms. “L-look. I’m strong enough, right? I’m strong enough to fight.” He backed away a step, nearly tripping over Chokki’s arm. “I’m not like them. I can-”

The skeleton lashed out with its staff, knocking Domri’s axe out of his hands. Domri looked dumbfounded at where the weapon had fallen. A second later cold metal fingers clamped down on his jaw and jerked his face back around to face the skeleton.

  


Domri cried in surprise. A quick but pathetic sound that he was, for the briefest second, glad his comrades weren’t alive to hear.

“Let me go, you-”

The hands were cold

The hands were cold, and the cold seeped into Domri’s throat. His chest. His stomach.

“S-stop!” He grabbed the eternal’s arm to yank it off. These things were flimsy, right? He’d watched Revka rip half a dozen limbs out today, and he beat her at arm-wrestling all the time.

The cold flooded his fingers. His palms. His arms. They went numb.

Domri tried to shout. Someone would hear. Someone had to hear and come help him. The eternal squeezed, and only a gasp came out.

Walk. He had to planeswalk away. He could escape, and find more of his friends.

Domri’s knees gave out. He dipped down an inch, but the eternal held him upright.

He could fix this. He could make this right. Hadn’t he done right?

Pain was building in Domri’s chest. A crushing pain. A boot pressing the breath out of his lungs and into the eternal. His body sagged further, and his head lolled to the side. He saw the street. Bodies. His clan and the ones in tattered cloaks and hoods. Boars rooted around the corpses, snuffling and chewing.

Domri reached out to the rubble. To the dirt. The mana wouldn’t come to him. He tried to think of Ilharg, but in his mind the boar-god twisted into a shadow with horns and wings who just laughed.

Then the dragon was gone, and his head was full of light. Light that sang and hushed and went dark, dark, darker, darker, darker and quiet.

It was alright. It was alright. Just another burying, wasn’t it? Just another trial He would be fine. He would see the jungle again. He would see what he could turn Ravnica into. A good place. A green place. He just had to

  


_“Even the Swine” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC._


End file.
